United KingdomFood and restaurants2025 – ongoing

Mitchells & Butlers plc

Generative AI for menu design and guest complaint replies

Mitchells & Butlers used generative AI to suggest dish names and draft replies to guest complaints

In progressCompany's own claim

Problem

Marketers had to name dishes and structure menus by hand. General managers had to write each reply to guest complaints themselves.

Approach

M&B connected its systems to OpenAI through middleware, with set rules around use. The tool suggests dish names and menu structure to marketers. It drafts complaint replies for general managers, and a human makes the final call. The group also tested a customer-facing AI tool on the Vintage Inns website and set up an internal AI working group.

Results

No published figures

Takeaway

M&B kept a person in charge of every complaint reply. It said the Vintage Inns test drew high uptake, and that further investment would depend on the test data.

Sources

Mitchells & Butlers: "AI helps us move faster"
The Morning Advertiser14 Oct 2025News article

Source summaries

[1]The Morning Advertiser14 Oct 2025

The article reports remarks by M&B's director of digital product and transformation, Richard Whitehouse. He said time spent on menu design and customer service tasks had fallen, without giving figures. He also said uptake of the Vintage Inns AI test was high and that its data would guide further investment.

Full details are in the original sources.

Added 1 Nov 2026 · Updated 1 Nov 2026